no real answers
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: [Tokyo Babylon] Subaru finds himself in the most unlikely of places and starts to pick up where his life dropped off... (belated birthday fic)


disclaimer: yui doesn't own Tokyo Babylon or X. Peace Plaza and such tourist spots mentioned are SF affiliated. She's just in love with Subaru, Hokuto, and Seishirou so you get to read a fic. ^_^  
  
No real answers.  
  
by miyamoto yui  
  
By the date on the newspaper, I see that it's December 12th, 1993.   
  
It's quite ironic considering the fact that yesterday in Japan, it was also December 12th, 1993. Is that supposed to tell me something? I know now that my innocence has cost me more than my life or its meaning. Therefore, coincidences are a mustn't. They are rather troublesome mind games that never seem to end with the passage of time.  
  
And these days, I only keep track of time by the little numbers written in Chinese when they appear absentmindedly in print. I really am not aware of what day or date it is, and I don't give a damn.  
  
Time is useless when you can't sleep or eat. And especially, it's worthless when you don't care.  
  
It's all just an extended day called endurance. Survival, even. All with in-between reveries or fits of 'sleep' which I call daydreaming now because I do not seem to sleep. I just go on stand-by mode in which I pass without consciously thinking and it's filled with nothing but static.  
  
No more dreams. None at all.  
  
At least, pathetically, I still know what's day and night. When the sun shines, it's day and when it slips away to reveal the darkness, it is night. Sometimes, I can't tell.  
  
My eyes squint from tiredness or is it that I can't read the Asahi correctly? I can't tell.  
  
It's midday and I sit in front of a structure that I can't seem to describe, but I sit beside it anyway. I am in between two entrances, which it seems, to be the middle of what the people around me call 'Japantown'. I think the structure is called 'Peace Plaza'.  
  
I sit on the cold stone and I still feel the freezing touch through my jeans. I look around and slip my right hand into my jean jacket pocket. But I stop reaching for my cigarette when I see little children running around to my right side. Their mother, of whom I presume is their mother despite the fact that she looks so young, sits a little far off on the same stone seating and watches her two children. One is a girl and the other is a boy.  
  
Yet again, I dread the fact that Grandmother thought I should get away from Tokyo and take a job here in the United States even though she knows I do not know enough English except the bare basics because I hardly went to school. Hokuto was the one that could speak it well. That's considering the fact that she dated foreign guys, to say the least, and listened to many English songs so she had lots and lots of practice.  
  
I get up and wander around to the K bookstore and listlessly look at the familiar texts. Then, I look around at the restaurants and cross the bridge again. I step over the other side of the building to see a familiar picture of a bubbly girl.  
  
I stop to look closer at a display showing through a store window. It's a cd by Rebecca, I remember that this is one of Hokuto's favorite groups.  
  
"Love is Cash" was her favorite song. Why? Men would ask for dates because she looked wealthy and/or interesting.  
  
I wonder if she ever found someone she liked from the bottom of her heart and if that person ever liked her back…  
  
Even if there is a murmur deep within my heart from remembering all this, I conjure up a little smile.  
  
I find it funny that I am quite enjoying this little town that's supposed to represent my home country. I wonder why that is, but I cannot describe it. It is the same explanation I give for many, many things.   
  
I continue to stare at the display, but I stand up to find myself wandering off in my head again. I come back to reality and blink to see my own reflection before me. It catches me off-guard again.  
  
Maybe this is what she would look like once she turned nineteen, only with longer hair.  
  
Like clockwork, whenever I get too much into painful thoughts, I distract myself on purpose. I am so good at that these days that I don't have to try anymore. I notice that my white shirt has smudges on it. I forgot to wash it again.  
  
"Who cares," I answer myself while turning away, trying not to think of what the dark stain looks like. I fail, though.  
  
It is Seishirou that sticks persistently onto my shirt stain and it mockingly looks like a blood mark.  
  
I turn away from my own reflection and walk quickly out of the building. I'm almost running out even though the entrance-exit isn't too far. Too many things bombard me, both physically and mentally.  
  
When I pass through the automatic doors, I take a deep breath and sit at the spot I was once before. Only this time, there is, fortunately, no one too close to me.  
  
I take out a cigarette and wonder what the hell he's doing in Japan. I look at the watch and think that it should be early morning there, shouldn't it? Strange that I can calculate (or at least I think so, hazily) time when it comes to him.  
  
Again, I fall into my own trap.  
  
I have stopped watching soap operas, but I remember one that I found on the International channel the other night.  
  
How can you love someone so much and hate them at the same time? I don't know, but it seems to be a common theme in television these days. The audiences find it amusing and it's quite popular.  
  
I simply think it's absurd.  
  
Then again, the world is fucked up anyway. And television's supposed to be a representation of reality? In a sense, that is very true.  
  
Agitated, I get up while lighting my cigarette.  
  
Why am I even here? Because Grandmother said I needed to learn to breathe again.  
  
I don't know if I'll ever learn to do that basic function ever again.  
  
I'm so used to being suffocated by everything around me, even though I never say that to anyone. Even if I don't look like it.  
  
I head towards Chinatown. The map deceives me and I find it to be much longer than I anticipate. As I walk these streets I find things that are common to all modernized cities: The other end of the scale.   
  
Maybe I should have taken a cab, but my legs seem to want to walk and my eyes want to look around.  
  
"You live in a bubble," Seishirou told me once. He didn't mean it maliciously, nor did he mean it in a joke. I couldn't read him when he told me that.  
  
Nonetheless, I resented him for it. I was naïve, but I wasn't ignorant to the world and its problems. Wasn't I the one that these people ran to when they felt they were forsaken by the gods or the demons? Weren't there times that they made me god or the demon?  
  
I knew. I knew a lot more than I was ready to face by the time I turned nine.  
  
Chinatown's an encompassed space bursting with nothing but energy. What kind, I cannot distinguish. There are too many to count and even more that I can't even name.  
  
Even though I shake my head at the women and men prompting me to eat at their restaurants, my mood changes again. I laugh to myself.  
  
Or rather, I laugh at myself.  
  
I try to present myself as giving and yet I am truly selfish, aren't I?  
  
I live with a good family name with a job I don't particularly care for, but I survive without thinking.  
  
Going through all these up and down streets, my lungs feel a bit heavy. Maybe the clean air is getting to me or is it the exercise?  
  
Further on, I see homeless people sitting at street corners. A man sings about God and his mercy, or so I'm feeling. Literally, I can't understand his language.  
  
Though I do not believe in his God, if I believe in religion at all now, I like the way he sings. It is not loud and it isn't pushy. He sings strongly and sincerely.  
  
Taking out a hundred dollar bill from my pocket, I wrap it inside a one dollar bill. Then, I put it in his 32- ounce drink cup. He just nods his head at me and I smile back at him while proceeding onward.  
  
I take the local subway system to another part of town. Then, I take a bus, as is indicated on the map I printed out from my hotel room on Van Ness. (I am sure I was put there so that I'd be next to Japantown.)  
  
Without even taking it out of my back pocket again, I easily find my way to a very tall apartment building. This is the reason I come to California in the first place, but as to why I must spend a week here, I have no apparent idea.  
  
I knock on the door of an apartment of a girl who wants my advice. As to why my grandmother accepted this job, I will never know. As to why I accepted in the first place, I had a feeling I should.  
  
The girl is of medium-height and has extra long hair. She pushes her glasses up as she shyly smiles at me while saying that her name is Shimri. I can't tell what nationality she is or where her name comes from.  
  
  
  
She politely makes me sit on her bed since there's nowhere else to sit. It is a cramped room.   
  
I don't think she has any intention of doing anything to me, I've had this trouble before.  
  
But as the girl looks at me, she gives me a direct stare. We both know what I am here for.  
  
"You are Sumeragi Subaru-san?" she says more like a question of belief rather than me confirming my own presence. I've already told her my name. I told her when I was at the door.  
  
"Yes," I say, trying to be as polite as possible.  
  
She shows me her hands. Even though there is nothing in them, when I squint, I see an unusual redness. Almost like blood instead of the pinkness of life showing through.  
  
"I don't know what to do. You see it, don't you?" she says, terrified beyond belief.  
  
"Why are they red?" I ask while looking around her apartment for a clue.  
  
I faintly sense something, but it is not anything harmful, or so I note.  
  
"It's that dream I had. A woman I've disliked all my life asked me if I was close to God," she tells me while placing her hands down on her black pants. She grabs onto her pants a little tightly. "I thought it was nothing, but I went to a fortune teller to tell me what to do because it really bothered me. I have had many nightmares, but this is the first time that I've felt this threatened."  
  
"And what did the fortune teller tell you to do?" I look at her again, but I continue to ask another question. "You didn't even have to ask the fortune teller. You have this ability."  
  
Her eyes wander towards her hands. "She told me to come to you to take out the redness."  
  
I take her hands and peer at them again. What did this mean? Why did I have to be the one to do this? This job is the easiest I've ever done so far and I can't believe Grandmother agreed to it. I had to travel thousands of miles for this??  
  
"Why did the woman in your dreams tell you that you're close to God and that you'd be able to grant her wish?" I ask while pushing my thumbs into the middle of her palms.  
  
"I know I have something…" she shakes her head and sighs. "…but I don't have that kind of authority. Not over what the woman wanted me to do."  
  
I tilt my head to one side. I do not understand why, but the girl makes me feel at ease and for a moment, I revert back in time to my sixteen-year-old self, the time where I could show I cared.  
  
A time before my face was wiped clean of emotion.  
  
"What did she want?"  
  
"To revive her son. She thinks I can pray to God for another one or to resurrect the one that was lost." She shakes her head again. Her hands are trembling. "I didn't think too much about the dream, but it disturbed me."  
  
"You are angered towards this woman and because of that, it came in this form. She's asking you to pray that the other twin lives. The girl," I tell her as I close my eyes out of concern, but with familiarity with this situation. "That's why you have a redness appearing all over your hands. You hold her life."  
  
"I don't like the woman. She's caused nothing but misery for me, but I've never told anyone about what she does to me. But believe me when I say I never wanted this to happen. And I do believe in these gifts that you and I have, Sumeragi-san, but…" she grabs onto my hands and looks into my eyes as I look back at her. "…what will be the equivalent for this?"  
  
Her eyes begin to water in confusion and clarification. She's so split in the middle that she understands unconsciously, all too well. But, she's trying to push it away from her.  
  
"In what you and I do, there's always something you have to give in order to attain something else," she says while holding onto my hands. She's calmed down, but her eyes are still hesitant. "Many people don't understand this concept."  
  
"And then, they drain you, not knowing that what they're asking you takes so much away from you," I add.  
  
She nods in understanding.   
  
It is then that I understand why my grandmother has pushed me to take this supposedly 'insignificant job'.  
  
It didn't really require me at all…  
  
The girl knew here own answers…  
  
I hold onto her hands and close my eyes again, trying to read through the redness. And in this silent state, there is an unknown darkness. I'm reaching into this girl's heart and soul while trying to find the ghost that's trying to eat its way through her heart like a worm inside a rotting apple.  
  
And I see it. It's a little boy. The boy is asking why did this have to happen. Why is it that he was the one to die?   
  
The boy looks at me and is trying to push me away, to make the girl feel what he feels. He is also confused on what to do because of his innocence, but he still pushes me away. He doesn't want me there.  
  
"I want to save my sister. This is the only way," he says with defiance. "She is the only one I have."   
  
He wants the guilt to consume Shimri and her anger towards his mother, thinking that that kind of 'forgiveness' will help his sister's karma.  
  
I shake my head and try to hold onto the little boy with both of my hands on his shoulders. He looks down at the ground. He does not resist me.  
  
After a minute, he looks into my eyes.  
  
"This girl hurt my mother," the boy says, of course, not knowing the history between the girl and the woman.   
  
Of course, just as when a mother protects her own, a child is dependent on their mother. They protect their mother when there is nothing else in the world.  
  
It is only natural.  
  
But I tell him that this isn't the way of the world.  
  
My eyes become a bit off as a flash of Seishirou comes to mind. My heart aches as if it itself is a living entity separate from me. Or could it be that I am the parasite holding onto this organ?  
  
"Let it go," I say aloud.  
  
Then, I open my eyes to watch what the girl will do.  
  
"It's hard," she answers me. "I know I have done a lot of things in life, but she has no right to treat me as if I were below her when she's awful through and through."  
  
She shakes her head as I take my hands away. I get up.   
  
"This is all I can do. Only you can control what happens from here." I bow my head and turn around.  
  
But instead of my indifferent actions getting the better of me, I actually reach out and touch the top of the girl's soft, black hair.  
  
A gust of wind makes the curtains flutter.  
  
I cannot breathe too well, but I feel the clean air sinking in.   
  
"Why do I have to understand? Why do I have to understand her?" she says before I lift my hand.   
  
She isn't crying, but her voice conveys only a fraction of her inner turmoil.  
  
I am not good at talking, but I feel like something or someone else possesses me as I answer, "Because we can."  
  
Then, I leave her apartment.  
  
The next day, I walk around the city and think about Shimri and my own answers to her questions. I find myself enjoying the walking and meandering despite the fact that I am still caught in the middle.  
  
--  
  
I go home to Japan. On the plane, I dream about her.   
  
Hokuto-chan is calling out my name. "Subaru! Subaru!"  
  
She jumps from behind me and puts her arms around my shoulders. I close my eyes from the impact as she whispers with loneliness into my ear, "Why do you look like that?"  
  
"Hmm?" I am so lost in thought that I don't pay attention to my expression towards the penguins as my hands tightly hold onto the railing before me.  
  
She closes her eyes. Then she grins as she opens her eyes while pressing her cheek to mine. "You're not caged in."  
  
"Hokuto-chan…"  
  
I turn my head to see that she has grown. I am looking at my reflection. She is nineteen as she is supposed to be, she has long hair, she is the way I imagine her to be right now…  
  
"You are my brother, Subaru. No matter what has or will happen, nothing will change that fact. I will always be proud of that fact. I'm right behind you." She points at one penguin scared to go into the water while the other one pushes him in.  
  
She laughs her wonderful laugh.  
  
When I wake up, I feel my heart melting inside of me even though it does not show on my face.  
  
So, instead of heading straight back to my apartment, I go to Sunshine 60. I have a bag over my shoulder, but I am looking at the penguins that I thought always represented me.  
  
I am not scared. I am not angry. I do not seek revenge, even though I am justified to do so.  
  
I love and I hate at the same time.  
  
I want to die, but even stronger, I also find myself wanting to live.   
  
Yes, a person can only take so much of breathing in and crying with no tears showing outside.  
  
But why is it that a million miles from home, in SF, only a few days gone, do I find 'myself'?  
  
I do not know, but the reason for this is irrelevant to me.  
  
And so, I will stay here and wait for you while I walk on forward in my silence.  
  
Even… even if it's for a brief encounter that will break me all over again.  
  
I forgive you.  
  
A jolt goes through my body and I find myself whispering these words to myself to make sure they are real. "I forgive you."  
  
With a blink of my two eyes, they fill with a (seeming) millennium of suppressed tears. They blur my gaze of the penguins and I see many as if one eye was looking through a kaleidoscope. Many penguins in a comb-like vision.  
  
I remembered myself saying, "I'm sorry I'm late."  
  
"It's okay…" you tried to comfort me.  
  
Through the blur, I can calmly think of Seishirou-san and Hokuto-chan.  
  
I smile as I push the raindrops falling from my eyes.   
  
Even though it hurts me,  
  
Even though it makes my heart cringe,   
  
Even though it just for a little while,   
  
I can finally smile at my memories…  
  
…and at the future I want to fight for.  
  
Even if it will come to nothing.  
  
Even if it's just inside of my head.  
  
I want to believe-  
  
No, I can believe in this world once more.  
  
If it breaks in front of me again, I can mend it.   
  
  
  
It may not be perfect, but I have to live here for her sake.   
  
For my own.  
  
For his…  
  
I don't know about the reasons of why you came to me. I only know the superficial excuses of why you left.  
  
There are many questions with a variety of answers.  
  
I don't care about any of that, Seishirou-san.  
  
I have finally learned that I shouldn't.  
  
Owari.  
  
--  
  
Author's note: I had wanted to do a longer fic, but due to time constraints in relation to school and life, I haven't touched anything related to fanfic-ing since the last fanfic in January.   
  
For this fic, I was once again debating on what type of perspective that I wanted to use, but I decided to do it from the first perspective and deliver a different type of mentality into Subaru. Since most people do not dwell on what happens in between 1990 and 1999, I thought I'd give it a shot. It is vulnerable time for Subaru, but I'm sick of feeling sorry for him for the moment and so I wanted to make this fic that would make him more courageous than what I usually present him, especially in the X era.  
  
And if you think of the dream as one that's made up, I changed no facts. It's a true account. From who, I shall not say.  
  
So, Happy Birthday to you, Subaru and Hokuto! ^_^ 


End file.
